General Erection 2019

[Max Power]

On 12/8/2019 at 1:59 PM, MPDTT said:

Made me chuckle. The problem is the looney left is unelectable. Boris can do what he wants. If Labour throw out Momentum, dump Corbyn, McDonald and all those on the hard left and had a centrist leader and manifesto, they'd romp home. Their ideology is dead. It hasn't won a UK election since the 70s and never will again.

I'd vote for whoeever it took to keep Corbyn out of Downing street and I've come to terms with the fact that I may have to accept Brexit as it's a lot less frightening than Comrade Corbyn and that awful manifesto of his.

 

Yep.

[unfitfinlay]

29 minutes ago, ColinBollocks said:

Johnson has said there won't be another one, IIRC. Of course, never take him at his word, but it's not something he'll concede soon. As discussed, I'm interesting to see how Sturgeon gets there.

It's going to be difficult.

The only workable option I can see is appealing to another source - either courts or through the international community - to pressure Johnson into agreeing to recognise the result. We do have the right to self-determination after all.

The other options - holding an unapproved one or simply declaring Independence - will just lead to what we saw in Catalonia, and sitting on our hands will just lead to support evaporating. 

6 minutes ago, MPDTT said:

2. As a Jew who lost 2 grandparents in Auschwitz and sees the Labour party and the Corbynism movement as the biggest threat I've ever known in my lifetime, I'm absolutely delighted that Labour have been wiped out.

With all due respect, I find it mind-blowing that you found Corbyn a bigger threat than the Tories.

Are vague reports of antisemitism in the Labour Party really more worrying than the Tories spending nine years inflaming racial tensions, throwing children into detention centres and deporting people - including British Citizens - to their deaths?

Do you really think the Party that blames immigrants - who are a net contributor to the economy - for all our ills, will even hesitate to turn on Jews as soon as it benefits them?

[Accident Prone]

52 minutes ago, MPDTT said:

Perhaps you want to reflect on the fact that the silent majority remains silent time and time again until election day and then votes Tory because the left continuously like to berate anyone that voices views that differ to their own. I never throw personal insults, I never belittle anyone and I never swear at people for their different views.

That way of thinking worked ten years ago. Politics is a lot more personal now that people's suffering is a lot more publicized and politicians (and the public's) views become more radicalized. Socio-political issues have become much more ingrained, and topics such as climate change have become heavily interwoven in the conversation.

The party you vote for now has a direct and huge effect on the quality of people's lives, and a vote for the Tory party (just as an example) usually has a negative, lasting effect on those who are less fortunate and those who are already struggling. 

So yeah, shouting down people who "JUST WANT BREXIT DONE, INNIT" even though their vote will cost people their lives, sounds okay to me because we're not just voting on stuff like water rates, public transport costs and what kids get taught at schools anymore.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Accident Prone

[BomberPat]

I assumed I'd feel utterly miserable today, but I just feel flat and dejected.

It's clear that this was a Labour loss far more than it was a Tory win. So what's necessary is a significant amount of reflection and rethinking from the Labour Party. What worries me is that every indication I'm seeing so far is that they'll make a knee-jerk reaction towards another failed ideology.

The received wisdom just about everywhere is that we lost for being too left-wing, and that a return to the centre is the only solution. But that does nothing to address why we also lost under Miliband and under Gordon Brown before that, it does nothing to address why an avowed centrist party in the Lib Dems returned the second lowest number of seats in their history (second only to Nick Clegg post-coalition government) and saw the leader of that party lose her seat.

This absolutely is a time for introspection, but it would be folly for that introspection to not include a serious consideration of why Third Way politics failed. 

 

It would also be absurd to think that a post-Corbyn leader would somehow lead us into a world where the press welcome them with open arms, and are suddenly sympathetic to our cause. Any Labour leader is going to be pilloried by the press for infractions real or imagined. We need to accept that as political reality, and figure out the best means to contend an election with a hostile press, not either shrug and blame them for our failures, or sell out every guiding principle in order to cosy up to them.

 

In the meantime, I recently read the 1979 socialist/feminist book Beyond The Fragments, and the most jarring thing about it is how much it was taken as granted that there was a widely understood British left wing tradition, and how much of that was comprised of community groups, activist movements, local councils, and other agencies working alongside the Labour Party. One of Thatcher's greatest successes, and one that frankly Tony Blair expanded on, was to dismantle and defang each and every one of those organisations, and to lead us into a world where neoliberalism is seen as the natural order of things. We're left no longer rallying for a genuine alternative, but on the back foot defending battles already won. Whereas once British socialists would argue for sweeping reforms, now we're left trying to defend the likes of the NHS - trying to claw back the things we already fought for.

[Factotum]

Quote

the left continuously like to berate anyone that voices views that differ to their own

As does everyone, especially in this era of social media.The right are just as bad at doing it, as are those in the centre. It riles everyone up. Whether than be a Corbynista shouting at Luciana Berger for being a Blairite, to Julia Hartley Brewer telling the left to fuck off, or James O'brien, the centirst Dad, sighing at someone who supports either side because he thinks he's right.

[Cod Eye]

The only thing that is keeping me from feeling rock bottom, is the hope that because Johnson has admitted that a huge factor of his win was Labour voters backing him that it tempers his natural right wng policies a little in a bid to keep those voters in 5 years time(if we get that far).

Apart from that, the results feel bizaar. I've just seen that the more deprived an area has been, the higher the unemployment and the higher the child povety the better the Tory vote was. The only explanation can be that they hope BREXIT will be a magic wand for them(probably due to the immigrints, Muslims an "Darkies" will be booted out meaning things will be rosy for them), which feels really short sighted to me, and the preverbial turkeys voting for Christmas scenario.

Personally, I feel my family and I are very lucky as our Labour MP has held his seat. He's a really good bloke who has bent over backards to help us out on a big issue recently...

 

[Chest Rockwell]

6 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

We need to accept that as political reality, and figure out the best means to contend an election with a hostile press, not either shrug and blame them for our failures, or sell out every guiding principle in order to cosy up to them.

I think the failure in this respect from Labour's campaign was their refusal to accept that the right sets the narrative. This was a Brexit election and they chose to try to ignore that one issue and change the narrative. Not possible. They needed to lean into it and frame all their other points in that context. They didn't seem to even try to make the connection or set the context with their other policy points.

[tiger_rick]

The right are just as bad but he does have a point. If places Thatcher destroyed voting Tory isn't the final wake-up call we all need to realise we can't just keep sticking our nose in the air and assuming it's a minority of knuckle-dragging racists on the other side.

I agree with Pat somewhat that the response shouldn't be kneejerk. There are a lot of people who have voted Tory for the first/only time to get Brexit through. In five years, their view of the world will be vastly different, especially if it goes to shit. I disagree on moving back central though. The only elected Labour government in my lifetime was "New Labour". That's just not a coincidence.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Yep.

[Factotum]

I think post-Brexit, the next Labour leader will have a better chance given the fact its happened. It was always an odd balancing act they were trying to pull off with Brexit which I understood to a point. 2017 the Labour vote went up as the UKIP voters in those leave towns etc. went back to Labour. Seems now they've swung to Tory as they want Brexit to happen and it is looking like it might get hijacked and not.

New Labour leader has the chance to set out what they will do post Brexit, and hammer the Tories. They wont have the weight of 'getting Brexit done' or 'second referendum' around their neck. I do think it makes a big difference.

[Onyx2]

On 11/24/2019 at 11:59 PM, Onyx2 said:

Sadly so. 

Here's my constituency's voting record in my lifetime. 

More blue than Chubby Brown. A couple of narrow windows where Labour nearly stood a chance, but my pocket of Essex remains staunchly 'not in my back yard', 'get them out', and 'hands off my hard earned.' 

Oily odious bigot man-toad Mark Francois grew his lead to 73%.

I despair. 

[King Mal the Glorious]

Twitter at least gave me a chuckle with this order of tweets:

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by King Mal the Glorious

[MPDTT]

1 hour ago, Factotum said:

As does everyone, especially in this era of social media.The right are just as bad at doing it, as are those in the centre. It riles everyone up. Whether than be a Corbynista shouting at Luciana Berger for being a Blairite, to Julia Hartley Brewer telling the left to fuck off, or James O'brien, the centirst Dad, sighing at someone who supports either side because he thinks he's right.

I listen to James O'Brian each day. He's brilliant, but he's not going around telling everyone who disagrees with him to fuck off! He wants the debate and is damn good at it.

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, Cod Eye said:

The only explanation can be that they hope BREXIT will be a magic wand for them(probably due to the immigrints, Muslims an "Darkies" will be booted out meaning things will be rosy for them), which feels really short sighted to me

 

I think this is an easy conclusion to jump to, but one we should try and avoid at all costs, because it's in part the sort of rhetoric that's losing support from what once were Labour heartlands. We can't tut and admonish Stanley Johnson for saying that the British public are uneducated and illiterate, and then write off entire constituencies as knuckle-dragging racists.

A lot of people voted for Brexit because, quite frankly, they'd tried everything else. Voting Labour didn't see their industries come back, voting Tory didn't make them richer. As frustrating as it is to see Brexit as a protest vote against things other than the EU, for a lot of people it was simply a last gasp effort to find something, anything that might help. And these are the exact same people that an increasingly middle class Labour Party are failing to reach.

1 hour ago, Chest Rockwell said:

I think the failure in this respect from Labour's campaign was their refusal to accept that the right sets the narrative. This was a Brexit election and they chose to try to ignore that one issue and change the narrative. Not possible. They needed to lean into it and frame all their other points in that context. They didn't seem to even try to make the connection or set the context with their other policy points.

Absolutely. I think the one thing Labour did correctly in this campaign was funneling far more money into social media campaigning than into establishment media - that's the only way Labour can attempt to take control of the narrative when faced with a hostile press. But it clearly wasn't enough and, from what I can tell, was either too strongly focused on pushing young first-time voters or on preaching to the converted, and didn't do enough to reach the majority. 

Corbyn simply wasn't a strong enough leader to take control of the narrative on any of the issues, Brexit or otherwise. This needed to be a largely reactive campaign, and unfortunately for those of us who believed in the content of the manifesto, it was too proactive.

57 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

I disagree on moving back central though. The only elected Labour government in my lifetime was "New Labour". That's just not a coincidence.

I think we need a drastic rethink on what the future of the Labour Party looks like, on a similar scale to that which gave us New Labour. But I don't think New Labour 2.0 is the answer, because the Third Way has failed as an ideology, and I think the Blair years, and to a lesser extent Brown presiding over the financial crash and the expenses scandal, played a huge part in destroying public trust in politicians. That lack of trust is what allows the likes of Boris Johnson to lie with impunity because, now more than ever, the general public assume they're all lying anyway, so it doesn't matter so long as it "feels right". That lack of trust means that a new Tony Blair will likely be seen as a smooth operator with ulterior motives, not an earnest politician doing what he believes is right. 

There needs to be serious consideration of how to bridge the gap between a middle-class membership and a traditionally working class voter base (including difficult conversations around what we actually mean by "working class"), around what a Labour election campaign should look like in the 21st century, and a drastic rethink of how the Labour Party relates to Brexit and to Leave voters.

What worries me is that everyone must surely recognise the need for this kind of reform, but no one will agree on exactly what we got wrong. The Labour Party can pretty consistently be relied upon to learn the exact wrong lessons every time, and a kneejerk response in any direction could be lethal.

[Accident Prone]

10 minutes ago, MPDTT said:

I listen to James O'Brian each day. He's brilliant, but he's not going around telling everyone who disagrees with him to fuck off! He wants the debate and is damn good at it.

Again, this is fine if you're debating the finer details of the immigration manifesto or looking at where all those tax dollars go to. But if someone called into O'Brian's show and said "I AM VOTING FOR THE TORIES BECAUSE LEAVE MEANS LEAVE AND I DON'T LIKE ALL THESE NON-WHITES IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD AND I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE REPERCUSSIONS TO THE NHS" he would absolutely be in his rights to tell that person to fuck off. You can't debate rationally with bigots, racists and cunts.

I am currently having an argument in a FB thread as I foolishly made a comment about not being happy with my local seat being taken by a Tory in a long-standing Labour area (I rarely, if ever, comment on public FB threads like that). Someone told me they voted for the local Tory because she hates the people washing cars at the lights and begging for money (yeah, fuck the homeless), she wants an end to Uber in our area because the drivers are "nasty" (yikes) and wants an end to HMOs for no particular reason (because fuck students and those on lower-income jobs). That kind of person isn't going to respond to any constructive debate (trust me, people have tried) and so she is rightfully being told to fuck off for being a racist, classist, uncompassionate arsehole.